Michael Fremer's "Tracking Angle" has put up Installment #3 of my ongoing series about great books about the history of records and of the record business.
#3 is probably the highest recommendation I gave, Amanda Petrusich's Odyssey of collecting 78 rpm Blues records. I quote myself, under Fair Use:
START:
Supposedly, in order to sell a producer on your idea for a movie, you have to be able to explain the plot setup in no more than five words. One real-life example being, "Episcopal Priest Inherits Topless Bar." Really. The five-word movie pitch for Do Not Sell at Any Price might be "Rock Chick Hunts Blues 78rpms."
In the case of Amanda Petrusich, "hunt" is not a mere figure of speech. Ms. Petrusich was sucked so deeply into the vortex occupied by obsessive collectors of 78rpm Blues records (the title comes from a note she saw attached to one ultra-rare 78), that, despite her claustrophobia, she took scuba-diving lessons.
That was so that she could conduct her own underwater search of a river bed in Wisconsin. Why? Supposedly the P.O.'ed employees of Paramount Records, when the business shut down, had thrown the production stampers into the river. If that label name rings a bell, that might be because contemporary musician Jack White organized the reissue of most of the Paramount catalog in the famous "Paramount Suitcase" projects.
END
While you are at The Tracking Angle, please check out MF's review of the Meitner optical cartridge phono stage. Perhaps not so much for the phono stage, as MF's complete explanation of how the Microgrove LP encode-decode system (which "Turns Over" from Constant Amplitude to Constant Velocity) works.
That is what enables LPs simultaneously to encode a High E with a wavelength of 10 inches, and a Low E with a wavelength of 27 feet.
john
#3 is probably the highest recommendation I gave, Amanda Petrusich's Odyssey of collecting 78 rpm Blues records. I quote myself, under Fair Use:
START:
Supposedly, in order to sell a producer on your idea for a movie, you have to be able to explain the plot setup in no more than five words. One real-life example being, "Episcopal Priest Inherits Topless Bar." Really. The five-word movie pitch for Do Not Sell at Any Price might be "Rock Chick Hunts Blues 78rpms."
In the case of Amanda Petrusich, "hunt" is not a mere figure of speech. Ms. Petrusich was sucked so deeply into the vortex occupied by obsessive collectors of 78rpm Blues records (the title comes from a note she saw attached to one ultra-rare 78), that, despite her claustrophobia, she took scuba-diving lessons.
That was so that she could conduct her own underwater search of a river bed in Wisconsin. Why? Supposedly the P.O.'ed employees of Paramount Records, when the business shut down, had thrown the production stampers into the river. If that label name rings a bell, that might be because contemporary musician Jack White organized the reissue of most of the Paramount catalog in the famous "Paramount Suitcase" projects.
END
While you are at The Tracking Angle, please check out MF's review of the Meitner optical cartridge phono stage. Perhaps not so much for the phono stage, as MF's complete explanation of how the Microgrove LP encode-decode system (which "Turns Over" from Constant Amplitude to Constant Velocity) works.
That is what enables LPs simultaneously to encode a High E with a wavelength of 10 inches, and a Low E with a wavelength of 27 feet.
john